But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead: “But you hate me. You kicked me out of my home. So why are you coming to me now? Because you are in trouble. Right?” The elders of Gilead replied, “That’s it exactly. We’ve come to you to get you to go with us and fight the Ammonites. You’ll be the head of all of us, all the Gileadites.” (Judges 11:7-8 MSG) Jephthah, if you don’t know, was a Judge over Israel for a period of six years. In fact, if you looked at what he did in his six years as judge, you would think that his life was primed for such an occasion of heroism. I mean, how many people lead their broken and wasted countries into war with invading guerrilla marauders in a relatively short time period and succeed? Our 21st Century American Congress can’t even solve a sequester, just imagine if they had to lead a beaten and conquered nation, do you think they could do it? I wouldn’t count on it, but that’s a different story for another day. However, before Jephthah was judge, he was the illegitimate son of a prostitute that was thrown out of his home by his half-brothers. (Yeah, your families aren’t as bad in comparison.) Jephthah didn’t choose his mother, he was just faulted for who his mother was. As a result, he is “driven out” and then finds himself as the leader of a gang that hunts, pillages, and in all likelihood, storms other towns and villages for goods and supplies. This “reject” of an Israelite man was called by God to rescue the very people that abandoned him. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It sounds like the story of Joseph, Moses, David and even Jesus! They were all driven out and rejected by their own people only to redeem their ejectors. Sometimes this is the predicament we find ourselves. We didn’t cause the hatred, we just were happened upon it, like ill-fate. How often have you been told that you did not belong? How many times have you been outcast? Shamed? The irony in Jephthah’s story and that of Joseph, Moses, David and Jesus is that they were “the stones that the builders rejected which become the cornerstones” (Psalm 118:22). I’ll tell you right now that Jephthah became the leader despite his obvious disadvantages and circumstances. In fact, he became the leader because of his perseverance through those disadvantages and circumstances. We, in our rejections, are primed just like Jephthah. We may not have control or any ideas over why or for what reasons we are driven out of favor by the rest of the world; but, do not think that because you are driven out that you were not created to be called by God to conquer.